Editorial: Truancy cure begins at home

Saginaw Mayor Joyce Seals has a problem with students who aren't going to school, and she wants the county to help out.

Too many suspended or expelled students -- or those just playing hooky -- are committing crimes, and last week Seals went before the county's Courts and Public Safety Committee. That's the first step in considering a daytime curfew and finding a place to send those kids.

Saginaw already has a 10 p.m. curfew for youngsters 17 and under.

County officials said they'd check whether a daytime curfew is legal and get back to her.

For the sake of argument, let's assume it is legal and that authorities have found a way to identify who's an expelled or suspended student. That still leaves some hefty hurdles to overcome.

Such as the money. How much would a countywide curfew corral cost? And, of course, where would that money come from?

County Commissioner James Graham was pretty blunt. "We should look at something," he said, "but we don't have the money in this county to do it."
Unfortunately, he's right.

Truancy here is not new. The prosecutor's office, the County Crime Prevention Council and the Circuit Court Family Division have worked on solving it since 2003.

Each year, the ISD and Crime Council release absentee figures. Last spring: 14 percent high school truancy countywide for the 2007-08 first semester. That was down from 22 percent three years earlier.

So, a little progress -- but it'll take a lot more.

Barbara Beeckman, Family Division deputy administrator, has a good feel for it. She says truancy isn't a school or law enforcement problem. It's a community problem.
At a conference last year, Beeckman said "students don't start off by saying 'I want to be a dropout.' " Other issues intervene.

Like attitude, procedure and parents.

Attitude starts in the elementaries, and getting to the kids when they're young is one key. One group, Parishioners on Patrol, is trying go into homes and emphasize school attendance.

And one school district, Saginaw Township, is taking another tack by promoting "It's cool to be smart," a nationwide effort to counter the belief that it isn't in-crowd cool to be smart or get good grades.

On procedure, one way seems to have wide acceptance: In-school suspensions.

Students wouldn't miss assignments, and it would keep them off the streets. Again, Saginaw Township does this. And Seals says she's already working on it with more school leaders and Saginaw's faith-based Ezekiel Project.

The main problem, though, is trying to hold parents accountable and get their truant kids back in the classroom. Beeckman says those parents don't care. Her words. Don't care.

Indifference about one's own offspring is a tough nut to crack. What the community -- Ezekiel, Parishioners on Patrol, the ISD, Family Division, prosecutor, school districts, Saginaw's mayor -- does about its truants runs into a stone-cold wall if parents don't care.

Maybe it takes jobs and money. Or help straight from the pulpit. Or the role model of a new president. Whatever. This may be a community problem, but it's a big, big parent problem, too.